Climate change: Tracking China's steel addiction in one city
By Robin Brant, BBC News, 10/8/21

In the post-Covid economic freeze, Beijing did what it
usually does: spend big on infrastructure and building to
heat up the economy. Steel is an integral part of that &
also a major industry in Wuzhou, which has generated lots
of new jobs - as well as a lot of pollution.

China has the highest carbon emissions in the world &
steel is its second most polluting industry after coal.
Steel has underpinned China's rise.

The vast industry that now dominates the global steel trade
created a huge number of jobs for workers who produce the
rods that hold up millions of buildings and bridges, as
well as the chassis and sheets that make millions of cars.

In many ways, the rise of steel can be directly linked to
increasing modernisation, urbanisation and the rising
aspirations of China's population.

Wuzhou is a small city - by China's standards - with a
population of around three million.

The BBC asked several steel companies if we could have
access to their facilities and interview senior staff in
Wuzhou, but they all refused.

However, you can see the construction everywhere. You see
the clusters of cranes. You hear the trucks. All of it
evidence of a country that's still shifting its people
to the cities.

But amid mounting pressure on climate targets, like many
other cities it is trying to slow down.

Last month Wuzhou authorities ordered six steel mills to
reduce production, to try to hit energy consumption and
emissions targets. Workers we spoke to near one plant
confirmed they were temporarily on reduced working hours.
It's a snapshot though, not the whole picture.

China is expected to keep increasing its demand for coal
until 2026. It's expected to increase its carbon emissions
annually until 2030.

After that, it has committed to reducing emissions
gradually for another 39 years until 2060, by which time
it aims to go net-zero on carbon emissions.

In fact Carbon Brief, a respected climate science website,
said that companies in China's two largest carbon-emitting
sectors - power & iron & steel - "have continued to
announce new investments in coal-based capacity, pointing
to a continued mismatch with the country's emissions goals".

Analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy & Clean Air
seen by the BBC indicates that "a total of 18 new blast
furnace projects... and 43 new coal-fired power plant
units were announced."

And even Wuzhou might be trying to ease off the relentless
construction but it doesn't look like a city that's
slowing down. Many of its residents like first-time home
buyer Zhong Xin, 19, also see no need to slow down.

"They are building a lot of apartments here but also they
will grow green plants," she says, adding that "if they
don't build buildings there the land will be wasted and
the green landscape won't look good".

Home for her is an apartment that sits on the 13th floor
of a tower block that was completed a few years ago. She
and her boyfriend saved and borrowed from a bank to buy
the place together.

As we chatted on her balcony, with her ginger kitten at
my feet, I asked her what she knew about climate change
& how China's pollution compared to the rest of the world.
"I'm quite busy at work so I don't really follow it.
Sorry," she said.

She is indeed busy. She has two jobs and a mortgage,
living what China's leader Xi Jinping has called the
"China dream" - the ruling Communist Party's ambition of
a rapidly modernised nation and a moderately prosperous
society. But now it's under pressure to make that dream
a much cleaner one.

Zhong, who works as a real estate agent, is another
person who doesn't see any need for China to slow down
because of what he views as "wild accusations" from the US.
Timing is the key issue. China will slow down, he said,
when it's ready.

"I think the US is not friendly to China. What we're doing
is no-one else's business. I suppose we should just ignore
the wild accusations from the US and focus on developing
ourselves, right?"

But he is also a realist. China's "build, build, build"
attitude could be a problem for him and his trade.

"The whole industry is very sluggish," he told me.
"Because most of Wuzhou's people are leaving the city &
the younger generation don't really want babies, right?
So the need for homes is not that big anymore."

Construction does often mean emptiness in China, with
overcapacity an issue in many of its cities where many
tower blocks and shops stand without any residents.

China has often built because it's often the simplest way
to spur on the economy. But it's also driven by the fact
that tax from land sales has long been the established
way to raise money for local governments.

Biden's climate envoy John Kerry has been to China twice
in recent months to try to hammer out an agreement between
the world's two biggest economies, on measures to cut
carbon emissions. He told me and a handful of others
that China "can do more".

It doesn't have to do what the US is doing, he said, but
it should be "sufficient to your own capacities". In short,
he thinks China has to reduce its reliance on coal,
increase its energy mix and cut its carbon emissions
faster. Otherwise, it could wipe out the efforts of
numerous smaller nations.

What China finally decides to do about emissions will be
a balance between its domestic demands and its growing
global obligations.

Climate specialist Shu Wang, from global consultants firm
ICF, put it like this: "In my conversations with some
local governments they are quite concerned about how to
achieve the requirements of the (central) government on
carbon emission reduction, while also realising the
original economic growth, because they are facing quite
big pressure to maintain GDP growth every year."

As we drove from an area of steel mills back into Wuzhou
city centre I saw an incongruously beautiful poster on a
brick apartment block - a massive copy of the Mona Lisa.

The "build, build, build" mantra might not have made
China more beautiful, but the people who talked to us
were clear: it has made this country "better".

The Communist Party leaders now have to work out how to
keep this powerhouse economy growing, and stick to their
promise of creating a richer country, while also having
to fast-track making it greener.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58798595